Motorsport: Gilmour on podium despite injury

Emma Gilmour drove to a second place in the Asia-Pacific rally championship.

New Zealand driver Emma Gilmour overcame a broken wrist to finish second in the Asia-Pacific rally championship series (APRC) which ended in China yesterday.

It marked the best result by a New Zealander in Asia-Pacific rallying since 2000 when the late Possum Bourne won the APRC crown.

Gilmour finished second among the APRC-registered drivers in the three-day Chinese rally behind Australian Cody Crocker, and these two filled the same placing on the series standings.

She started the Chinese event third in the series, and needing to beat former APRC champion Katsuhiko Taguchi to improve to second.

The initial signs were not promising for the 29-year-old, who was from maintaining the pace needed to stay within striking distance of her experienced Japanese rival by an early engine problem.

Fortune then swung her way late on the rally's opening leg when Taguchi was sidelined for good by a serious mechanical problem.

His demise left Gilmour fifth overall and second in the APRC field for the event behind her Motor Image Racing teammate Crocker.

Gilmour then needed a steady run to the finish on the rally's remaining leg to take second in the series, but that proved no easy matter over extremely demanding Chinese roads that had already claimed half of the rally's field as casualties on the opening day.

She suffered a puncture on yesterday's first stage, with the inevitable delay made worse firstly by the difficulty in finding a suitable place to stop and change the wheel, and secondly by the car falling off the jack.

On the next stage, a minor pace note error caused a small off-road excursion, during which the car's steering wheel jerked violently, breaking Gilmour's right wrist.

"Continuing on with a fractured wrist would have been very, very tough at the best of times, but even more so in China, where the stages are so much tighter and twister than I am used to," Gilmour said.

"I wasn't going to surrender a chance for second in the championship, so I continued as best I could."

Gilmour dropped only one place in the overall positions and was able to hold second in the APRC field as she soldiered on to the finish.

Gilmour scored her championship second placing by finishing in the top three in each of the six rounds she contested.

Her best individual results were second in the APRC field on the Malaysian and Chinese rounds of the series, both of which she was contesting for the first time this year.

She finished third in the APRC field in the Australian, New Zealand, Japanese and Indonesian events.

- NZPA